


Homecoming

by christopher417



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christopher417/pseuds/christopher417
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a summer in Stoneybrook, Dawn returns to Palo City for her senior year and finds herself trapped in her thoughts about the two different lives she leads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pie_is_good](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pie_is_good/gifts).



> First, I apologise for the terrible title. Hopefully inspiration strikes and I change it (if anybody has any suggestions, go ahead! I won't be hurt).  
> Second, sorry for slightly emo!Dawn. But I thought the prompt lent itself to exploring those darker/less self-assured periods we all have at times (and which Dawn certainly experienced during the main series).  
> I know this work isn't perfect, but hopefully you get some enjoyment out of it anyway. :)

Sunset in Connecticut came later than in California, and lasted longer. As Dawn sat on the back porch, long, tan legs outstretched, watching the sun fall through the magnolia sky, cool air pricked at her skin. It was impossible to believe that the summer holidays were over and tomorrow she would be back in hot, sunny California.

Her house in Palo City felt unreal to her now, like some kind of particularly vivid dream; the smell of kiwis and mango was just a memory and here, surrounded by freshly-mowed grass and creeping coolness, was the only real place in the world.

"Mind if I sit here?"

"Not at all," Dawn said, smiling at her stepsister. Mary Anne hadn't changed much in the years she'd been away; it was Dawn who'd shot up and tanned even darker, so that even she felt like a caricature of a California girl. But these visits always reminded her that there was a part of her that was confusingly, inextricably linked to the cosy suburbia of Stoneybrook.

"Dad wanted to go get ice cream, but Sharon's not sure where she put the keys, so he's looking in the attic," Mary Anne said, grinning.

"That's sugar addiction for you," joked Dawn.

Mary Anne said nothing, but Dawn knew she hadn't taken offence; their agreement to disagree about health food was one of their oldest sisterly compromises. Dawn watched Mary Anne's brown eyes drift off into the distance; she knew she would speak when she was ready. From the street came the sound of children playing. Distantly Dawn wondered if she knew them or if they were new.

When Mary Anne finally spoke, what she said was, "I'll miss you."

"Yeah," said Dawn. "I'll miss you too."

"Mary Anne! Dawn! We're going for ice cream! You coming?"

Mary Anne and Dawn met each other's eyes, and together they shouted, "Coming!"

 

. . . . . .

 

Dawn's heart soared as she stepped off the plane into caressing 95-degree warmth. As she strolled through the airport, her limbs exposed by jean shorts and t-shirt seemed to expand with relief as they soaked up the heat.

"Dawn!"

Dawn saw five grinning faces at the front of the crowd greeting the arrivals. She rushed over into the warm embrace of her dad, smiled at Carol, kissed her little sister Gracie on the head and ruffled Jeff's hair. He was going through a surfer phase and his hair was his greatest treasure; it was a sign of how much he'd missed Dawn that he only scowled slightly at her.

"Dorn! Dorn!" cried Gracie, clapping her little hands together with glee.

"Hey, kiddo," Dawn said, gently tugging Gracie's pigtail. Her little sister burst into ecstatic giggles.

"I hope the heat hasn't overwhelmed you too much - apparently the air con here's broken," Dawn's dad said as they headed towards the luggage carousel.

"Hey, it's not _that_ cold in Stoneybrook!"

"Whatever, Byron told me the other day that it was the coldest summer there in a decade," Jeff said.

"Yeah, well… shut up. "

"Isn’t it lovely to have the whole family back together?" said Dawn’s dad sarcastically, putting his arm around her.

 

. . . . .

 

That night, as Dawn lay in between the crisp clean sheets of her bed, she gazed at the items on top of her dresser: a picture of her and her best California friend, Sunny, wearing Mickey Mouse ears at Disneyland; a few pairs of sunglasses; a jewellery box; and lastly the teddy bear some of her Stoneybrook friends had given her at Christmas — it was even signed with their names: Kristy, Stacey, Claudia, and of course Mary Anne.

Dawn sighed. Yes, she would definitely miss them. But she was back in California now, and it was time for that life to begin again.

So how come all she could think about was Connecticut?

 

. . . . .

 

The asphalt sizzled, the sea sparkled, and Dawn’s sunglass-less eyes stung as she strolled down the esplanade with two of her best friends, Sunny and Ducky. Dawn hadn’t seen either of them all summer, and once school went back she’d hardly see Ducky, who went to college in LA, so it was great to be able to catch up with them both before senior year started.

“You’re so pale!” was the first thing Sunny had said when she saw Dawn again. “We need to get you out on to the sand!”

Now she was saying, “Look what a summer up north’s done for her, Ducky — she can’t even look at the sea without squinting!”

Dawn tried to smile, but she was a little annoyed. “I forgot my sunglasses, that’s all,” she murmured.

Sunny laughed as though she hadn’t heard. “I don’t know how you even _survived_ up there. All I’ve done all summer is sunbathe…”

“That and come over to bug me,” Ducky joked.

“If I didn’t, you’d spend all day sleeping and all night watching infomercials. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t.”

Dawn laughed at this familiar banter, but her mind was occupied with gazing out across the sparkling blue sea. She’d always thought of the sea as comforting, a big body of water that would continue on no matter what – but today it just seemed huge and indifferent.

Like Sunny and Ducky. They just kept joking and laughing around her, as though this was the way things had always been and always would be _;_ as though on the other side of the country there wasn't this whole other life being led by a whole other group of people.

“Earth to Dawn! Earth to Dawn! Can you read me?” Ducky called into her ear.

“Sorry, did you say something?”

Ducky rolled his eyes. “Would you like to get some sorbet? Sunny’s paying.”

“Hey! I am _not!_ ”

“Sure,” said Dawn, smiling weakly.

“Then maybe we could go into the water,” Sunny suggested as they crossed to their favourite sorbet place.

Dawn shot a nervous glance at the vacillating waves. “Maybe some other time.”

 

. . . . . .

 

 _You’re overreacting, Dawn. You always take a whole to adjust when you get back from Stoneybrook._ Dawn took the pink crayon from the pile.

“Hey Gracie, can I colour the princess’s dress?”

“Okay,” her sister said graciously. She crawled over to watch Dawn.

“I think this looks great, don’t you? It really goes with her green skin.”

“Yeah,” said Gracie. “I want green skin too! Can we paint my skin green?”

Dawn grinned. “Not today, sorry. Mom and Dad are going to be home any minute, and then they’re taking us all out for dinner.” It had been Carol’s idea — reunite the family, celebrate the last week of summer, all that stuff.

“Dinner! Dinner! Yay!” Gracie started leaping around the living room, her pigtails flapping about.

Dawn wished she could be that enthused.

“So, Dawn, are you excited about the subjects you’re doing this year?” Carol asked as they sat round the table at Giuseppe’s that night. “No, Gracie darling, draw on the paper, not the table.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.” Dawn poured herself some water.

“They’ll get you a head start in your courses at college, at least, and that’s the important thing,” her Dad said.

“Yeah.” Dawn was excited about majoring in Environmental Science at college… She just wasn’t so pumped for the whole college part. But she couldn’t talk to her dad and stepmom about that. _“Did it throw your life upside down when you went off to college? Oh, wait, I guess you didn’t already have two completely different lives at opposite ends of the country. And two different families, and houses, and sets of friends, and lives…”_

“What about you, Jeff?” Carol was asking.

As Jeff said something in response, Dawn watched Gracie. She was colouring in a clown, concentrating intently, her brow furrowed and her tongue poking out of her mouth.

 _Does she stress over that like it’s super important?_ Dawn wondered. _Will I think I’m just being silly in a few years’ time?_

She sighed, frustrated with herself. She wasn’t the neurotic type. She was the chilled, casual type. Organised, sure, but flexible. Casual.

 _Pull yourself together, Dawn,_ she thought. _Snap out of it._

 

. . . . . .

 

Dawn dreamt that Gracie came running up to her with a doll in her hands, only its head was in her right hand and its body in her left. Tears were pouring down her cheeks.

“Fix her, Dorn!” she cried. “Fix my dolly!”

“I can’t,” Dawn said, her voice high and wavering. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how…”

“She can’t breathe! Fix her! _Fix her!_ ”

Dawn backed away, panicked. “I can’t,” she kept saying. “I can’t…”

 

. . . . . .

 

School was school. Dawn was in the same homeroom as Sunny, which was great. She had a terrible math teacher, which sucked. Everything else was just so-so. She spent her first day daydreaming about what Mary Anne’s first day would be like.

“Want to come to The Beachside Café tonight?” Sunny asked her as they prepared to split up at the end of the day. “This cool new band’s playing, it’ll be rocking.”

“I can’t, sorry, I’ve got to call Mary Anne,” Dawn said. “Enjoy it though.”

“Okay, but don’t blame me when you regret it! See you tomorrow.”

 

. . . . . .

 

“Hey Richard,’ Dawn said, at exactly nine pm Connecticut time. “Could you put Mary Anne on, please?”

“I’m sorry, Dawn, she has book club meeting… Would you like me to tell her to call you later?”

“Uh, no, thanks, that’s okay,” Dawn said. “See ya.” As she hung up the phone, she made her decision; grabbing her bag from the corner she ran downstairs, calling, “I’m taking the car out! Be back soon!”

“Okay!” cried someone from inside the house.

. . . . . .

 

Dawn didn’t go to The Beachside Café. She didn’t go to the beach at all. She drove around the suburbs of Palo City, wondering at how different they could look at night. The deep green blades of grass were almost sinister, waving in the breeze. It was hard to believe that kids played in them during the day.

 _What are you doing, Dawn?_ she asked herself. _You should just go home and stop acting so weirdly._

But she didn’t go home; she kept driving, gently in the quiet of the night. If it weren’t for the silhouettes in the windows she could have thought she was the only person in the world. She still felt in a separate world from those brightly-lit houses.

Despite everything, Dawn found herself at the beach. She got out of the car and sat on the esplanade in the light of the streetlamps. The breeze was even stronger down there, and no-one else seemed very keen to linger. Dawn tilted her head back and looked at the stars. Fewer than in Stoneybrook, because of the pollution; still, it comforted her to know that they shared the same sky. In the distance she could hear the music of The Beachside Café.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Dawn turned swiftly, her heart racing, but it was only Ducky. A Ducky who’d had a few drinks, going by his goofy smile.

“Mind if I take a seat?” he asked. Dawn shrugged. He sat down next to her and looked out across the ocean. “It’s pretty beautiful, huh?”

Dawn looked down towards the sea. Yes, there was a strange, chilling beauty in the darkness of the water and the silvery reflections of the moon. But there was that depth too, that terrifying depth.

“What’s college like, Ducky?” she asked suddenly.

“College? It’s awesome!” He yelled it like some dumb frat boy.

“Don’t be stupid. I mean, what’s it really like?”

Ducky’s face turned sober. “I don’t know, I guess it’s like anywhere else. It’s what you make it. Different place, different people, same old life.”

Dawn didn’t say anything. She didn’t _want_ any more people, any more places; she felt like she could hardly handle the ones she already had.

“Hey, you okay?” Ducky asked softly. “You’ve seemed kind of — I don’t know — distant lately.”

Dawn turned to him, and somehow, she didn’t know how, there were tears in her eyes. And then it all came out, words tumbling across each other like marbles rolling downhill.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I feel … like I’m drowning. Or I’m being torn apart. Like one half of me's in Stoneybrook, with all of my friends there, and my mom, and my stepsister… and another half’s here, with you guys, and Dad and Carol and Jeff and Grace. And no matter where I go, I’m not whole… The only constant I have is me. And I get kinda sick of just being with myself, you know?” She shook her head and looked at the sand far below her legs. “I know it's dumb. But I can't, like, snap myself out of it.”

“Dawn.” Ducky looked deep into her eyes with his slightly glazed, but very serious, ones. “It’s not stupid, okay? It’s perfectly understandable. Everyone gets lonely. Everyone gets confused. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“But all I ever do lately is think of being somewhere else… I’m never just _here_ anymore.”

“Hey, I’m not saying living in the moment isn’t great. But you can’t force it, Dawn. Those moments when your mind’s truly blank, when you really are just living in that very second – the reason they’re so special is because the rest of the time you’re thinking about a crapload of other things. That’s not dumb, Dawn. It's _human_.”

Dawn frowned, looking at the water again. It was surging forward, eating up the sand… and then it fell back, taking some with it but leaving most of it behind, wet but intact.

Ducky asked, “Do you want to move back to Connecticut?”

Dawn thought of Stoneybrook winters and shivered. “No,” she said, and meant it.

“Well there you go. You’ve made your decision. Beating yourself up about it’s not going to help any.”

Dawn smiled, a slight, weak smile. “You’re a good friend, Ducky.”

He shrugged. “I do my best.”

“Can I ask one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Do you ever look at kids and wish your life was that simple?”

“Heck no! Do you _remember_ being a kid? God, that was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.”

Dawn laughed, a real laugh this time. Maybe things would be okay. Maybe she was growing up, sure, but that didn’t mean things were more complicated, just that they were complicated in a different way.

“You know, Sunny and that are over at The Beachside — want to come?” Ducky asked.

“Sure, I guess. But can we just do one thing first?” Dawn threw herself off the esplanade and fell, laughing, onto the sand.

“Girl, you’re crazy!” Ducky cried down after her. “You think I’m jumping off this thing?”

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” Dawn lied, rubbing her hip.

Ducky came running to her from the stairs and helped pull her to her feet. “Right, can we go to the café now?”

“Oh, that wasn’t what I wanted to do, that was just the way down.”

“Well then what _do_ you want to do?”

“This.” And, laughing, her long blonde hair streaming out behind her, Dawn sprinted across the sand and straight into the water. The dark waves lapped her up, cocooning her in their warmth; she dived straight into them, her clothes immediately sticking to her.

Ducky was at her side as she surfaced. “You’re crazy!” he shouted, splashing her.

“I’m living in the moment!”                              

“Can we take that moment to the café?”

Laughing, Dawn tore out of the water and down the beach, the sand sticking to her feet. _I wouldn’t be doing this if I was in Stoneybrook,_ she thought, but that was the end of that thought; she was here, in the muggy Palo City night, with sand between her toes and a café to get to.

She ran. 


End file.
